The Highline Trail

After The Dragon's Tail awakening, we decided to stick to trails made and maintained by the National Park Service, not mountain goats. We decided on the Highline Trail, which starts at the Logan Pass visitors center, and continues for 12 miles to a shuttle pickup further down the pass.  

And also..... there was something we could summit! It wasn't a mountain, but it was a butte!

Even the climb to Haystack Butte was challenging, even though it was listed as "family friendly" in our summit book. But once we got up to the top we were rewarded by 360 views that gave us a different perspective of the park around us.  

Descending back to the Highline Trail was also challenging, and I finally started feeling the inadequacies of my shoes. We had hiked about 55 miles in cycling shoes and crocs at this point, and believe it or not neither footwear was designed for angular descents or steep climbs. But we still had about 12 miles to go AND this was our last Glacier hike. We had to make the most of it. 

By the time we reached the Grinnell Glacier overlook, we only had a few hours to make it down to the shuttle stop and 5 more miles to hike. The trail up to the overlook ascended diagonally up the cliffside with no switchback. Straight shot up to the top of a ridge. Life was really hard at that moment but I really wanted to see the glacier from the higher perspective. It was WORTH IT. 

From there was basically ran down the mountain, actually jogging as certain points. Something was happening to my feet that I had never experienced. My second toe on my right foot was tingling in pain every I put pressure on it, and it kind of felt like the bones in the top of my feet were splitting apart. I also had blisters on the balls of my feet and the pads of my toes. On top of that, we were descending 1500 feet into hot valley air, walking through a burned out forest (ie no shade). We were running out of water. We had 45 minutes till the last shuttle would leave and strand us on the mountain. It was difficult. 

But we made it in time! We survived Glacier with inappropriate equipment! Success.  

The Dragon's Tail Attempt

Now is probably a good time to tell you about how I got a little preoccupied with summiting a mountain. I follow all these people on Instagram in Colorado or wherever who are always posting pictures on the tippy top of a peak and it looks really amazing. Also we found a guide book showing climbers routes to the top of Glacier's peaks, and from the pictures and difficulty ratings, the peaks near Logan Pass looked totally doable. The only thing standing in my way were Travis' reminders of his fear of heights and his footwear.

I was not to be deterred! We got up really early to catch the first shuttles up to the Pass, but still ended up waiting an hour and a half, then rode on the shuttle for another hour and a half. I'll tell you something, you want to see Travis in his element? Put him on a shuttle bus with other tourists for a couple of hours. He can yak and yak about our trip while finding common ground with absolute strangers, and he can keep it up for the ENTIRE journey. There is political greatness in his future. Mitchell for County Commissioner 2022!

We walked with the hoards over to Hidden Lake, trying to ignore the feeling that we were in a theme park. The completely tame mountain goats didn't dissuade me of that feeling. 

There is a tried and true method for ditching the crowds at any national park, no matter how many people you're rubbing elbows with: walk ten minutes off onto a side trail.

Within a quarter mile of turning off on the trail leading to The Dragon's Tail ridge, we only ran into 6 other people. Getting up the base of the mountain was pretty easy, we just followed the well defined official park trail.

The hard part was figuring out how to make it over to the goat path leading to the peak of the Dragon's Tail. We attempted to skirt across a sandy hillside with preciously angular drop, and Travis said he was NOT going to walk on something that had no horizontal foot placement, and by the way we are not mountain goats and did not evolve to do this. Considering that we were already on all fours clinging to a hillside within 10 minutes of our attempt, I agreed to retreat.

We looked to the left and saw a big group descending Reynolds Mountain down a basically vertical path, and for some reason Travis was willing to follow where others had gone even though the trail looked equally treacherous. Reynolds Mountain is the peak to the left, and the ridge to the right is The Dragon's Tail. 

So we took big breaths and started climbing, using all four limbs to haul ourselves up the mountainside. The Dragon's Tail is behind me.

And then I had a little feeling. A feeling like, "Wait, how am I going to get down from here?" And then another feeling like, "Wait, I'm to scared to stand up all the way on two feet right now." And then we got to a stopping place and I told Travis I didn't want to go anymore. He rejoiced! He said he was glad I finally reached the panic level that he had been sustaining this whole time, proving that he wasn't just a scaredy pants and that being uneasy that high up is a normal human reaction.

MAYBE one day I will summit a mountain but I think I need real hiking shoes first. 

The West Glacier Zoo

It was time to leave Two Medicine, partly because we had run out of food and partly because I had FOMO (fear of missing out) about the West side of the park. I knew the West side of the park was popular, but I figured it was like pop music-- people liked it for a reason. We descended 2000 feet during our ride around the Southern end of the park, and finally arrived in West Glacier.

Oh boy, that was quite a change. The Eastern half Going-To-The-Sun Road was still closed at the halfway point, and it seemed like all of the people who would normally be driving the 48 miles through the entire park were all packed into the West side. It was such a spectacle. These were the people who were on their Western road trip, hitting up all the major sights in Yellowstone, the Tetons, and Glacier. They wanted Glacier sweatshirts, huckleberry souvenirs, and to view all they could from their RV windows. Ok not everyone but mostly everyone.

On our second day in West Glacier we learned that they had opened Going-To-The-Sun up to Logan Pass! There were bus shuttles that could take us to the top of the pass, allowing us to see some of the park's iconic mountains and hike trails that were formally off limits. 

But....... we were reminded that that we were in a zoo. The wait time for the shuttles was an hour and a half MINIMUM. And the travel time to the top of the pass added on another hour and a half. So we put off Logan Pass for a day and hiked the popular Avalanche Creek trail. We passed a bunch of brave people who had left the comforts of their cars and were huffing and puffing their way to the top. Ok not everyone but mostly everyone.

It ended up at Avalanche Lake.

Travis followed it up to the waterfalls. 

And we ended up at our campsite on Lake McDonald, where we took a dip in one of the warmest lakes we've swum in so far, and got ready for the next day's adventures. 

Two Medicine

The vibe at Two Medicine was completely different from Many Glacier. It was way chiller and much smaller. Glacier National Park gets 2 million visitors every year, and from what I can tell most of them skip Two Medicine. Big mistake suckers!!

We spent the first day picnicking at Paradise Point. How could you not drink beer and nap at a place called Paradise Point??? 

What we were really doing was conserving energy for our most ambitious hike yet: a big 19 mile loop to Dawson Pass up to the Continental Divide. Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that our Florida lungs and legs can't handle a 19 mile hike. Well I will say that it only took four hikes for our walking muscles to build up, and even though we're not like those maniac trail runners, we can kind of hold our own now. Which is good because this loop hike took almost 11 hours to complete and we gained 2300 feet in elevation.

It started out easy as we slowly climbed up from the lake, winding our way through prime huckleberry patches and alpine lakes. We finally reached the wildflower-covered cliffside and switchbacked our way up to the ridge.

WOW have you ever stood on a ridge on the rocky mountains??? 

While I was getting more and more excited about being so high, Travis' anxiety level was reaching 7 out of 10 as we climbed even higher to the Continental Divide, partly because of the height but mostly because of the distant storms we could see on the other side of the valley.

We had reached a decision point: do we keep on hiking across the pass for three more miles and descend in another valley to complete the loop? Or do we turn around and head back the way we came? Luckily at this very moment an extremely fit couple basically ran up the trail and said that the path ahead was pretty flat and we could definitely beat the rain depending how fast we walked. We offered to take their picture and they said, "No, it's ok! We do selfies around the world." Then they snapped one and they were off. 

Even though Travis was wearing bathing suit bottoms and crocs, he still let me convince him to keep going, though he RAN across that ridge.

I asked him to give me a chance to take off my poncho to take a picture with this spectacular view but he was already off, trotting away in the wind convinced that we were about to die from lightening strikes.

But the views were so amazing that he admitted that he was glad we had kept going.

The rain never came, though I do understand Travis' concern. We're equipped for bike tour, not all-weather mountain hiking. Everyone else we passed had quick dry pants, rain jackets, and actual hiking shoes. If we had been caught in the rain it would have been terrible, and the wind was really whipping up.

 But we descended into the next valley into nice sunshine, and met this cute marmot on our way back down.